Google Aiming for $100 Billion of Revenue

At Google's analyst day two years ago, CEO Eric Schmidt made a
clever remark about Google laying the foundation to become "a
hundred-billion dollar company." He wouldn't clarify whether he
was referring to a "$100 billion market cap," which Google had
already attained, or "$100 billion of revenue."

In Ken Auletta's recent
New Yorker article, Schmidt was good enough to clarify the
company's ambitions: He means $100 billion in
revenue. And what engine will drive Google there? Mobile
phones:

There are almost three billion mobile phones worldwide, and
Schmidt expects a billion more in the next four years. If the
phones use Google software to sell advertising, Schmidt thinks
that over time it is “mathematically possible for Google to
become a one-hundred-billion-dollar corporation.” Two vital
markets are television, which is “easily attainable,” and mobile
phones, which are “more personable” and more “targetable” than
most advertising. To achieve this goal, Google would need to
claim ten per cent of all global advertising, which now amounts
to just under a trillion dollars.

For perspective, Google did about $16 billion in revenue last
year. $100 billion would mean increasing the company's size by a
mere 6X.